


Snapshots of Natasha Romanoff

by Nightshades13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Red Room (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightshades13/pseuds/Nightshades13
Summary: Natasha Romanoff's life, told in snippets from beginning to end.





	1. Natasha Romanoff's Childhood, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Natasha Romanoff's childhood was never easy.

Her first memory was of blood, snaking its way through rough wooden floor of her home. Fitting, she thought, later on, for an assassin. She looked up from the blood and saw the blank, ivory dark eyes of her mother. Later, when the flames were rising up from the wreckage of her house and they carried her away from the burning remains of her house, she did not cry. She only cried years later when she realized what she had lost that day.

Her second memory was of another girl. Alexandra, when the trainers were angry. Lexa, to her. On bad nights, when a girl had died or their bodies were swollen and bruised and pulsing with pain, they would whisper to each other, old memories or stories they had heard from the others. A glance across the classroom or in the cafeteria, pausing a few stray seconds on each other. In the afternoon, adrenaline pounding through their blood as they sprinted through snowy forests, catching glimpses of each other, here and there. They became friends through the barest of seconds, stolen moments that were strictly forbidden in the Red Room and would be harshly punished if anyone ever found out. But it was the closest they had to a friend.

Her third memory was of hunger, and secrets. Bread torn in half, hastily shoved into a dusty box at the very bottom of a ceiling vent. A few sips of soup, from a cook who looked at her with pitying eyes. Pieces of dried meat stolen from the cafeteria and shoved under her skirt. The ones who were caught stolen were killed. They shot those girls, when everyone was watching. The blood stained the slow, steam rising up.  
But to not steal was worse. She saw gaunt ribs and sunken eyes, girls who fell one day and never got up. She remembered Irina, who lay frozen in her bed, her starved body unable to keep her warm through the winter nights. "To push through weakness is strength," their instructors said. She vowed to keep both of them strong, her and Lexa.

Her fourth memory was of violence and death. The sickening crack of a girl's neck, as she snapped it in her hands. The iron taste in her mouth, when Alexandra broke her nose. Her room, empty and haunted with the ghosts of seventeen dead girls. Her hair caressed by soon to be dead men. Poison slipped in drinks, knives stabbed in the gaps between ribs. The aching of her wrist, after she killed four men with her bare hands and three more with a gun. Face splattered with blood, clothes dirtied with the brains and guts of men too stupid or too brave to run. By the time she was thirteen, she had learnt many ways to kill a man. By the time she was sixteen, she had used them all.

Her fifth memory was of pain. The agony of a knife's edge on her skin, over and over again, when she had failed. The smell of her burnt and bloody flesh as the instructors ensured she would never break. The utter anguish of having every cell of her body forcibly changed, when they turned her from human into something else. So many thought there was a way to escape, to hide within the confines of her mind. There wasn’t. She learned to push through pain, to endure it and without breaking, just as they intended. Later, she learned that there were still ways to break her.  
Then, they taught her how to inflict pain on others. The knives, the needles, tools of fire and sparks. She learned to use someone’s mind against them, to tread the delicate line between hurting and killing, between breaking and bending. This was when she started to question the Red Room, when she looked at a young girl with brown hair and teary eyes filled with fear and she couldn’t see her as the enemy.


	2. Childhood, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contradictions

She remembers her childhood. It was frozen winters that stole girls away, blood striking snow and spilling across marble. There was elegance and cruelty, brutality and civilization in equal parts. The feel of a hand across her cheek, the sliding of ballet slippers across marble floors. She remembered a small hand slipping into hers, brief smiles exchanged across the room. There was hunger, ever present in her stomach and an chill in her bones. She had grieved for the other girls, when they too had passed. Stolen away in the bloom of their youth, frozen in everlasting childhood.   
She remembers growing up. Drugs pumped into her body, to make her dull and compliant, wax in their forever manipulating hands. Agony as every cell in her body changed, turned to something she was not. Memories, turned soft and malleable, sliding out of her fingers whenever she tried to grasp them.  
The first time she had killed was in the yard, barefoot in the snow. The blood had gushed out of the girl's throat, staining the snow a delicate pink. She threw up in the bathroom, the cold tile warm against her frozen feet.   
Always, there seemed to be the burden of a thousand eyes on her. One misstep and she would be dead, just like the others. They were always watching, waiting  
Life had been a contradiction there. Silken dresses slipping on and off her shoulders, rough-hewn cotton brushing against her skin. Classical music played in a ballroom, men screaming curses at her classmates. Golden lights and warm rooms, dark alleyways and drafty hallways. The training facility had always seemed like a halfway point, a place where the glamour was half ripped, leaving patches of the darkness hidden behind it.  
But most of all, she remembered pain. They had beat her, bruised her, cut her into tiny pieces with their knives. They had torn away all she had loved, burned her heart and salted the ashes, so nothing may ever grow there.   
In the end, there could only be one Widow.   
 


End file.
